Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s feud with a top American news network has intensified just days ahead of the crucial Iowa caucus, as the controversial billionaire announced a rival event against Thursday’s nationally televised debate he boycotted.
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“I think it’s typical Trump”, said Don Kass, chairman of Iowa’s Plymouth County GOP.
Nor are there likely to be many undecided Republicans in the state who are more impressed with Cruz’s position on the issue than they are upset about it.
“I’m a maniac and everyone on this stage is stupid, fat and ugly”, said Texas Sen.
“Tonight I joined a small but growing club of reporters who have been banned from Donald Trump events”, Pema Levy wrote in a post on the website. That, too, seemed to elicit catcalls as well as applause.
Rubio and his supporters, meanwhile, have been glad to tout attacks from pro-Cruz forces as a sign of the Floridian’s gains in Iowa, where he has long registered in polls as a distant third behind Cruz and Trump. Kelly was set to be one of the moderators of this latest debate. Ailes said Trump offered to debate if Fox gave $5 million to Trump-backed charities – an offer Ailes said he refused.
Our Veterans have been treated like third-class citizens and it is my great honor to support them with this $1 million dollar contribution – they are truly incredible people.
He even joked that he “missed” Donald Trump’s presence on the stage, saying “he was a little teddy bear to me”. “But politics generally and especially intra-Republican political battles are really about demonstrating dominance – not policy mastery or polling leads but a series of symbols and actions that mark the dominating from the dominated”. He has done so while spending a fraction what his deep-pocketed intraparty opponents have spent. “Positioning this election as a showdown between Trump and Cruz does a disservice to the majority that can’t stand either one”.
Thanks to Rubio, faith had a major moment at Thursday night’s Republican debate which occurred just days before the Iowa caucus where almost 60% of caucus-goers in 2012 identified as born-again or evangelical Christians. It’s also a state that has historically welcomed refugees.
Rubio and Cruz tangled repeatedly on the issue of immigration, with the Florida senator claiming in rather personal terms that his Texas counterpart was misrepresenting his past.
Like other members of his party, Rubio is not sure where he should be on immigration.
Rep. Steve King, who represents that district and is co-chairman of Cruz’s campaign, said that Rubio’s views on the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage would hurt him there. Cruz, for his part, was shown on videotape swearing his support for the bill Cruz helped fashion in the Senate in 2013.
Both men essentially denied the videos’ implicit accusation of political hypocrisy.
“Marco Rubio has gone on Univision and said in Spanish, ‘No, no, no, I wouldn’t rescind amnesty, ‘” Cruz said while pledging to repeal Obama’s executive orders if elected president.
Jeb Bush didn’t humiliate himself.
“Isn’t this better than that debate that’s going on?”
On the topic of abortion, Kentucky Sen.
“The only budget that Ted has ever voted for is a budget that Rand Paul sponsored that brags about cutting defense spending”. He figured out how to attack what might be Cruz’s one real weakness: his holier-than-thou attitude about being the One True Conservative and his tendency to dismiss everyone else as a RINO.
“Without Trump there, Cruz became the piñata and he whines about it”, said Dennis Goldford, political science professor at Drake University. On this night, he frequently shifted from the topic of the question to the topic of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic front-runner’s legal exposures.
Also notable in the group of seven was the plucky and nearly puppyish demeanor of Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who persists in detailing policy and administrative changes he has brought about in Columbus, harking back at times to his era in the Congress of the 1990s and early 2000s.
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A retired neurosurgeon would of course be an unconventional choice for president, but that only partially explains what we saw from Ben Carson on Thursday.
